


Therapy

by glitteredsins, jennandanica



Series: Citadel: Antony Starr and Stephen Amell [80]
Category: Actor RPF, Arrow (TV 2012) RPF, Banshee (TV) RPF, Citadel (Journalfen RPG), New Zealand Actor RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 13:58:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14106879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteredsins/pseuds/glitteredsins, https://archiveofourown.org/users/jennandanica/pseuds/jennandanica





	Therapy

  
_Players only._  
_Backdated to:_ Early December 2013  
_Warnings:_ None.

Takes place the day after [this](http://antony-starr.dreamwidth.org/9392.html#cutid1).

Stephen glances down at his phone and back up at the house, he'd pulled up and parked in a freshly vacated spot outside the old Victorian building. He's got the address right, so he climbs out of the car, trepidation making him hesitant. He'd asked for this help, but right now? He'd rather not go through with it, he'd rather turn around, go home and try to pretend yesterday's outburst hadn't happened. Try and forget what that kid had said, and forget the way he's been feeling all week. He looks down at his hand, at the fresh dressing Antony had insisted on this morning and he huffs out a breath, there's no going back. Climbing the steps up, he gives his name to the security guy on the door, and he's directed to go into reception. Here he's greeted with a smile and shuffled through to a waiting room to take a seat.

Giving his last patient a few minutes to safely leave the house and himself a few more to finish his notes on their session, David opens the door to the waiting room and gives its occupant a warm smile. "Hi. I'm Dr. Litton. You must be Stephen. Come on in."

Stephen looks up when the door opens and rolls to his feet. He's not sure what he expected, hadn't really thought much about it, but yeah if he had, then the guy beckoning him to the office, would have been it. Tall, early 50's, clearly takes care of himself, dressed casually in light grey pants and a white dress shirt.

"Hey," Stephen's smile is less than stellar, but it's warm enough. "Thank you for seeing me at such short notice," he offers as he steps through the door.

"You're welcome. I'm glad I was able to fit you in," David says. "Can I get you a glass of water or anything before we start?" he asks, taking a seat in his usual chair and gesturing for Stephen to make himself comfortable in the one across from him.

"No, no thank you, I'm good," Stephen takes the seat, pulling one leg up to set ankle to knee. He casts a quick look around the room and then pulls his gaze back to the man opposite him.

"So, how can I help you today?" David asks.

"I..." Stephen stops, not entirely sure where to start now he's here. "Something happened a few days ago - and it's unsettled me, to the point that it's affecting my relationship with my partner, we're actually flying out to New Zealand in a few days to get married... and I can't have this hanging over me for that..." He pauses, lifting one hand he touches his collar, the understated daytime one. "We're in the life style, and it's all tied up in that."

David nods, absorbing everything Stephen's said so far. "What happened to unsettle you?"

He knows David is Citadel affiliated, and that the man knows that he, Stephen, is a member of the club - even so, it's not easy to talk about something like this to a complete stranger, when you spend so much time trying to hide it and be discreet. Stephen looks down at his hands, picks at the edge of the dressing that covers the grazes on his knuckles.

"My Sir and I, our relationship, it's intense, we're not officially 24/7 - but there's an ever present undercurrent, his dominance in my life, it's who he is, asking him not to be like that would be like asking him to stop breathing. And I’m... I guess I’m the yin to his yang, he has my submission, almost all the time, just to varying degrees depending on where we are, what we're doing." Pressing the edge of the tape back against his skin he looks up at the other man.

"I usually take great pride in my submission, in my submission to him, he is a wonderful man, a man I am honoured to call Sir. I accepted this part of myself a long time ago - but last weekend, yeah... someone said something, it wasn't malicious, it was a throwaway comment made in ignorance, but it cut me, very deeply, and I've been angry and unsettled ever since, by my reaction to it." A deep breath and Stephen goes on.

"He recognised me, this guy, commented on my work and then he looked me up and down and said '...who'd have thought you of all people would be - what? A slave?...'"

"And this was at Citadel?" David clarifies, internally wincing at the scenario Stephen's presented.

"Yes, at the pool, I was naked, collared, serving my Sir, and my instinctive reaction was shame."

"And that's the part that's bothering you," David says, making sure. "The shame."

Stephen nods, his chin dipped. "Yes, I felt shameful of something fundamental to who I am, I felt shame about something that underpins my relationship, I felt shame for the most precious thing I've given my lover and Sir, I felt cheapened by it."

David nods. "You said earlier that you'd accepted this part of yourself a long time ago. How does this fit in with that?"

"It doesn't, which is why I think I've been so distressed." Stephen shrugs. "I've tried to examine that, to see if I feel differently, but I don't, but it's freaked me out so much I've actually wanted to ask Sir to remove my collar for a time, but I haven't dared tell him that, he's very concerned about how this has been affecting me, and I don't want to worry him further."

"How did you respond in the moment?" David asks. "When the comment was made to you?"

"I told the guy to back off and stop talking to me, I made eye contact with the barman, my understanding being he'd speak to the guy once I left, and then I retreated back to Sir, I was... clear, calm and concise, however now... now I wish I'd hit him, I've been actively fantasising about that, replaying it up to that point and then imagining I'm laying him out."

"So, deep down, it made you angry?"

Stephen thinks on that for a moment. "I can't decide if the anger is at him, or me, for that initial reaction," he offers. "Antony went and spoke to the boy when I'd told him what had happened, and even that made me irritated - even though as my Sir it was his prerogative to do so."

"Your partner's getting involved made you irritated?" David clarifies. "You wanted to handle it yourself."

"He's done it before, when we've been in role, when someone has been inappropriate, he's taken care of it, always made sure I was respected, so by extension he was, and historically I always enjoyed it, it made me feel cherished, cared for, but not that day, that day it made me feel like I was too pathetic to take care of myself. Like a child." Stephen pauses to rub his hand over his face. "Seems all my reactions were off that day."

"Had anything happened to put them off?" David asks. "You mentioned you're getting married? Do you think that maybe your feelings about your submission are changing in response to that?"

"I hope not!" Stephen's rather horrified by the idea. "No, I don't think it's that, he tells me he'd still want me without my submission, but I can't see it, I can't imagine us being together and not being predominantly D/s." He shakes his head, "No, he thinks it was because a week earlier we'd indulged in a particularly heavy and brutal S&M scene, it had taken months to plan, and I was laid up for most the following week recovering, that day at the club was my first trip out."

"So your partner thinks your reactions were influenced by how you were still feeling after this scene," David says, making more notes. "Do you agree with him?"

He takes some time to think about it. "I don't know. Probably," another shrug. "When we scene I experience significant subspace, to the point I can't use a safe word, even if I had one, and that scene was a whole new level, I was in and out of my subspace for days, and I experienced some pretty heavy drop which is unusual for me, I guess I'm scared that the things we did that day either rattled something loose, or damaged me and this is a symptom of that."

David nods. "Can you tell me more about the scene?"

"We took an entire afternoon, went to a building Antony owns, he'd set everything up the day before," Stephen takes a breath. "He suspended me, he used an anal hook, beat me with a belt, front and back, verbally humiliated me, when he let me down he forced me to perform oral sex on him to the point it became breathplay, he pissed on me, um... I lose some of it at this point, but I took both his hands as he fisted me, and there was a further heavy beating, with fists and boots this time, and when he'd done all that he permanently pierced my genitals," Stephen's flushed at the point, relaying something so very intimate to a total stranger, but his discomfort is still significantly less than the shit he's been carrying around for the last week. "That's the gist of it, then he took me home."

It sounds like a brutal scene and of course it took place off-site which is interesting in and of itself but that's not for David to judge. "You said the scene took months to plan. Does that mean it was thoroughly negotiated - including the piercing - and was it something you wanted, or was it something you were doing for Antony?"

"It took so long simply because I rarely have a week of time where I can just drop off the face of the planet, and Antony had been very explicit about how far he wanted to go and how much recovery time I'd need, we'd talked about it on and off, and although I didn't know the specifics there was nothing we did that I didn't want, or wouldn't have actively agreed to had I known before hand, of course I do things to please him, that's part of our dynamic, but I don't _endure_ things to please him." He rubs his hand over his mouth. Talking about this isn't easy, and he's feeling no more relaxed than when he entered the room.

"And you feel you received enough aftercare?" David asks.

Stephen huffs out a noise at that. "Oh I got plenty, in all our time together I've never known Antony be so attentive, nothing was too much trouble, he always takes exceptionally good care of me."

David smiles. "I'm glad to hear it," he says. "Okay... I highly doubt the scene damaged you or in any way rattled something loose, which is not to say it wasn't still affecting you, especially if you hadn't been outside your home in a week."

"I don't want it to be that, I don't want Antony to not want to do it again because of this," Stephen shuffles in his seat, putting both feet to the floor. "Sometimes I worry I'm too absorbed in him, I mean I work and I love that, I love my job and I'm good at it, but outside of work... there's Antony and our life and nothing else, I've never been someone who had a lot of friends, I'm comfortable in my own company but he's the centre of my world you know... and I can't help wonder if that's not always healthy."

"It might not be," David admits, "particularly if you're concerned about it, but what about him? Does he have a lot of friends outside your relationship? Hobbies?"

"Yeah he has friends, one particularly close one, someone he works with, he's busy with his work, always seems to have things on the go, even when he's home for a few weeks between jobs, we travel, that's our thing, he's very well travelled and he enjoys sharing that with me," Stephen shrugs. "Our relationship is intense, we've known each other less than a year - I guess we're still in that full on phase."

David smiles. "Which might explain why he's the centre of your world - besides being your Sir. It's quite common for couples to focus on each other in the honeymoon stages of a relationship - and now, with getting married, you may be prolonging that. Either way, unless you're avoiding your friends or outside activities or unless he's insisting you avoid them, I don't think you need to worry. If you're really concerned though, you could make a concerted effort to see friends, develop your own hobbies, but I wouldn't say it's necessary."

"No, I'm not avoiding anything, and he'd never dream of isolating me like that." Stephen looks down at his hand, at the dressing. "So... yeah, I just feel like this last week I've been questioning things I had accepted as written in stone, and the more I looked at things, the more shit I started to question."

"Can I ask what happened to your hand?"

"Antony asked me if I wanted to talk about what happened, I said no and he got a little irritated with me - just his tone, but it was like he hit a button, before I knew what I was doing I punched a dent in our bedroom door," Stephen glances up, "He's never seen me angry like that, and when he got in my face wanting to know what the hell was going on, I actually went to hit him..."

"But you didn't?" David confirms. "Does he know you were going to?"

"No, I didn't," Stephen shakes his head, "But he knew it, even if I hadn't pulled my arm back to do it, he'd have seen it in my face, there's little I can hide from him." _Oh, the irony..._

"So mostly you've been feeling a lot of anger and resentment which you don't normally feel and it's colouring everything," David says. "Is that it, or am I missing something? Is there anything else going on in your relationship? Are you concerned about the wedding...?"

"I guess that's it, that and this need to poke at and question things that don't need examining." Stephen blows out a breath. "And no, I'm not concerned, it was my idea, nervous? Hell yes, I've never even met his family, and it's a huge step for us to take, but I feel if I was going in all blasé about it, then _that_ would be unhealthy,"

"I agree," David says. "Look. I think there's a lot to be said for residual headspace and sub drop affecting us in ways we don't even recognize or connect. A week away from your big scene and it feels like you should have been back to normal, but that's not necessarily the case. A heavy scene like the one you and Antony did can affect you for weeks. And having someone say something that pokes at the core of any insecurities you might have, no matter how deeply they're buried, or how okay you are with them when you're feeling normal, that's a hard thing to deal with. Especially if you feel like you should have reacted differently, should have felt differently, should have held your ground..."

"Okay," Stephen nods, his brow furrowed in concentration as he takes in David's words.

"It sounds like you have a normal, healthy relationship with your Sir and that includes having doubts and concerns occasionally. If you're getting married, and from what you've said, he seems to consider you an equal partner and if he sent you here, when the two of you couldn't talk things through, that says a lot as well. We can't be perfect. We can't always react the way we expect ourselves to react. I don't know how many times someone's said something cruel or obnoxious to me and I only come up with something to say hours later," David says with a smile. "And sometimes, if it's something particularly biting, it does stay with us, and it does eat away at us, and often the only cure is time and getting comfortable with ourselves again."  
Even as David is speaking, Stephen can feel the tension easing from his frame, the other man's words soothing him, giving him an explanation as to his behaviour, and acknowledgement that it was perfectly okay to feel so off in light of his recent scening. "So... I basically over reacted?" He manages a wry smile. "I'll take that."

David chuckles, giving Stephen a smile. "What I'd like you to do is go and enjoy your wedding and honeymoon - I've never been to New Zealand but it looks beautiful - and when you get back, I'd like you to come and see me again. You can tell me everything's settled and you're feeling fine and we'll keep it short or we can talk about any lingering doubts or anything else on your mind. Okay?"

"Okay," Stephen's own smile is easy, his relief at having gotten through this almost palpable. "Thank you so much, perspective is a wonderful thing right?"

"Definitely, and sometimes it takes talking to someone on the outside to get that perspective," David says, rising to his feet, his hand held out to Stephen. "It was a pleasure to meet you. I hope you have a wonderful time in New Zealand and I'll see you when you get back."

Stephen rolls to his feet, he takes the doctor's hand in both of his and shakes it firmly. "Thank you so much, really," he smiles and nods, before moving to the door to make his way out - to go home - to go home to Antony.

 

 


End file.
